The
Xbox LIVE Marketplace now has details on the upcoming "stimulus package" map pack to be released as DLC for
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which will be released for the 360 before other platforms. Word is: "The Stimulus Package delivers 5 additional action-packed multiplayer maps featuring a variety of locations: "Bailout," a multi-level apartment complex; "Storm," an open industrial park littered with heavy machinery; "Salvage," a snowy junkyard fortified by stacked debris and crushed cars. Two legendary fan-favorites from Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare return, including "Crash," a war-torn urban environment; and "Overgrown," which features a massive dry creek bed." Thanks
Joker961 via
IGN.
EA tweets that the
promised maintenance on their infrastructure is complete, presumably addressing some of the
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 capacity issues they've been experiencing. Word is: "EA Maintenance has now completed. All new hardware is in place and ready to server your BFBC2 needs."
There's an
APB preview on IGN discussing the MMO action game in development at Realtime Worlds, getting responses from designer David Jones about the game. There's also a trailer on
GameSpot showing David demonstrating the game, offering a good deal of second-hand gameplay footage shot off the monitor.
GameTrailers.com has video of the stage demonstration of
CryENGINE 3 at the Game Developers Conference. The clip is a ShakyCam dealie shot off a monitor, but still offers a sense of the visuals and development tools shown off at the demonstration. Thanks
inCrysis.
A post on
superannuation notes that Bungie has
filed a new trademark registration for Marathon, which was their first-person shooter series before the one-time Mac-centric developer was consolidated into Microsoft and became tied to Halo, the Xbox halo project. They
also show that Crytek UK (née Free Radical)
has file a trademark registration for Self Defense.
One-time Ensemble developer Paul Bettner spoke at GDC about the
closure of Ensemble Studios by Microsoft, blaming the studio's internal culture for its demise, rather than the corporate coldness of Microsoft in comments reported on
Eurogamer. "The reality is that every single game we shipped took twice as long as we said it was going to take, and cost twice as much to make," he said. "Microsoft is a public company, they answer to their shareholders, and we were simply too expensive." He describes a "crunch" culture where "everyone was a workaholic," taking personal responsibility, saying: "I watched this happen and I did almost nothing to stop it. As an employee, and later as a manager, I didn't take a stand. I just kept hoping for that next high." He discusses the "devastating" effect this has, saying: "We burn out all our best people." The
closure of Pandemic Studios by EA is also discussed from a first-hand perspective, as Carey Chico, formerly of the studio, describes their downfall as a lack of discipline following their capital influx from merging with BioWare: "When you have your own money, what happens is that you have to maintain your own accountability internally, and if you don't have that, you just f**k everything up."
The
Alien Swarm Website now features a small patch to update
Alien Swarm to version 1.34. The new version of this top-down squad-based shooter for
Unreal Tournament 2004 adds widescreen resolutions to the video options, fixes cursor aiming with widescreen aspect ratios, and fixes various overlapping UI elements. Thanks
Ant.
Here's the final listing of
Steam's top 10 bestselling titles for the week:
- Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Limited Edition
- Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 2 Chaos Rising
- Batman: Arkham Asylum + Just Cause Bundle
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
- Supreme Commander 2
- Assassin's Creed 2
- Left 4 Dead 2
- Counter-Strike: Source
- Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising
- Dragon Age: Origins Awakening
Thanks
Joker961.
Destructoid - Videogame 'fans' need to shut up about everything.
One of the main problems with these so-called fans is the fact that they never want things to change. They'd rather that games never evolve, and that 1996 remain the last year a new game was ever made. Nobody typifies this more than Fallout fanboys, who threw a fitful tantrum over Fallout 3. Their problem? The fact that it wasn't 100% exactly like the original Fallout.
Maximum PC - The Game Boy- The Case of Infinity Ward Vs. The People.
Which is a problem. A big problem, in fact. So long as gamers see Infinity Ward as “those guys who make Modern Warfare” and, say, Bungie as “those guys who make Halo,” publishers like Activision and Microsoft will be able to push them around. (Hell, Bungie was even forced to buy back its freedom from Microsoft in order to finally work its way off the never-ending Halo assembly line.) We can ramble on-and-on about how much we want innovative ideas and original IPs until we’re blue in the face, but money will always have more wind in its lungs.
Happy Pi day! Perhaps an appropriate celebration would be to have some pie, but be sure to note its diameter as you cut a slice so you can calculate its circumference.
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